Family won't stop hunt for answers in Mackay cold case

By Kristian Silva

The family involved in Queensland's longest missing children's case say they won't stop searching for answers until they know what happened to Marilyn Wallman.

Marilyn was 14 when she vanished from a Mackay road while riding her bike to school on March 21, 1972.

The Macgregor Creek area where Marilyn Wallman disappeared in 1972.

Photo: Supplied

She was presumed abducted and murdered, however nobody has ever been charged.

A partial skull was found in 1974 about 40 kilometres from the crime scene in Eimeo. While it was long suspected that it was Marilyn's, police were finally able to formally provide confirmation on Monday.

Marilyn Wallman disappeared from Macgregor Creek in March 1972.

Photo: Supplied

Advertisement

"We're all feeling relieved, I guess, that we know where Marilyn is," her brother Rex Wallman said.

"But also, it's hard to explain and put in to words. It's a good day for the family to know we've finally found Marilyn, but it's also a sad day. It means that even though we've thought in our hearts that Marilyn had passed it's hard to have the realisation that it actually has happened.

"It gives us enough to lay Marilyn to rest, but it's not enough of an answer for us to rest on. We'll be searching and trying to find the answers until we do."

Mr Wallman said family members were deciding on a burial site and date.

Marilyn Wallman went missing in 1972. The case remains unsolved.

Photo: File photo

The skull was first examined in 1974 and further tests were completed 13 years later. It was then sent to Victoria in 1999 and to a US FBI lab in 2001.

Recently it was tested by New Zealand researchers and finally by Queensland scientists, who used other DNA from the family to conclude that the skull belonged to Marilyn.

Rex and another brother, David, were just 10 minutes behind their sister on the day she went missing. Rex found his sister's abandoned bike and recalled hearing muffled screams from the nearby canefields, but that was as close as the search for Marilyn got.

Police looking for clues dug up a property on Bassett Street in North Mackay last year after a public tip-off, however Assistant Commissioner Mike Condon said it led to nothing.

He also ruled out further searches of where the skull was found at Macgregor Creek.

"There's been water through there and tonnes and tonnes of movement of soil over the years," he said.

Assistant Commissioner Condon said a $250,000 reward was in place for information leading to the identification of Marilyn's killer. Indemnity from prosecution was also possible, provided the person who came forward was not involved in the killing.

"There's been a number of leads over the 43 years that have been followed up, but certainly it is a very important part of the jigsaw with the formal identification of that skull remains," he said.

"There will be people who know exactly what's happened to Marilyn and, for reasons only known to them, have kept it close and secret for many, many years."